If I’m able to provide any feedback, one area of concern for me was the lack of any good-faith attempt to negotiate intermediate solutions with affected users aside from of flat-out banning communities with little to no prior notice (which, IMO, should only occur as a last resort). This is pretty much one of the reasons why I left reddit (with respect to Apollo/spez).

While I understand that the moderation tools here are limited, it was not hard for me to find that the lemmy github has already implemented some features allowing communities to be hidden from local/all (it was implemented in 2022), and in my opinion, the presence of scat or bestiality isn’t so desperately urgent of an issue that it can’t wait 1-2 weeks for a patch to be made here. As far as I can tell, no one (and no other lemmy instances) was actually complaining about bestiality hentai until the admins chose to ban it here. To me, it looks as though the admin team is trying to aggressively fix issues that aren’t broken.

Does it really make sense to ban SFW artwork from here when it hasn’t been a problem?

Many of us here at lemmy ran communities on reddit, and we are experienced moderators. I can say personally that the amount of spam/illegal content that I’ve needed to deal with on c/HeteroHentai is magnitudes less than the content I dealt with on reddit. At the end of the day, perhaps it might be worthwhile to ask community moderators here if they feel like they are overloaded with illegal IRL content before taking preemptive measures to ban everything under the sun.

On most other spaces that I’ve been part of, there are many intermediate solutions and approaches that communities have taken short of banning the communities entirely. For example:

• Noncon/dubcon content must be clearly warned in the post title
• Noncon/dubcon content must go inside a spoiler (for here, you could say that the image must go inside the post body so it doesn’t show while scrolling)
• Fictional noncon/dubcon is allowed, but the community/post cannot promote or encourage noncon (IRL)
• Drawn noncon/dubcon is allowed, but realistic appearing artwork (or rendered 3D artwork) isn’t

There are many variations on these types of rules that I’ve seen in many places, and they’re are magnitudes better than simply banning scat/bestiality/etc without giving it a second thought. The lack of consideration given towards this issue and the apparent bias of the current admins to IRL NSFW content over drawn/fictional NSFW content is very discouraging.

Unfortunately, this is a bottom line for me, and I won’t be staying at LemmyNSFW (departure post).

Thanks for running this instance until now, and I wish you and your team the best.

Perhaps I didn’t give the best example, but I was trying to illustrate that certain communities have historically been harassed or persecuted on the Internet – e.g. furry communities, my little pony, watersports, diapers, gay communities, and even BDSM (which has a long history of being banned in various areas) – and in each of those cases, they were banned because they were “unpleasant” by the mainstream view.

I wanted to ask this in another comment, but has anyone looked at this feature on lemmy? It seems that the ability for instance admins to hide particular communities from local/all by default was already implemented.

I can understand that sentiment, but it raises an eyebrow with me. If pokemon sex or okami (video game wolf) sex is not illegal, but banned because it’s unpleasant (by mainstream standards)… what is the basis that futanari, dickgirl, or transgender content shouldn’t be banned because (at least in America), transgender content is apparently controversial (and in some US states, illegal) by mainstream standards? Or what about furry content?

Of course, I’m not being totally serious here, but it’s a legitimate question.

Who determines what is “unpleasant” and how is that separated from (thinly masqueraded) intolerance towards a non-mainstream demographic?

Well, technically, the location of the server/hosting is sort of irrelevant for reddit. Reddit must abide by US law because it is registered as a US company, and it’s not a valid argument for them to say they’re allowed to do illegal things because the server is overseas.

Secondarily, tbh I think a lot of the attention that the admins here have placed here towards NSFL/noncon/dubcon/bestiality are a bit misguided, in part due to ignorance. From my own experience on the management team of an anime/manga server over the past decade, the number one legal threat is actually copyright claims. Lawsuits can go up to hundreds of thousands of dollars and Japan has arrested foreigners for posting/transmitting scanalated (fan-translated) manga. IMO c/piracy is actually illegal and actually a legitimate legal threat to any web admin hosting them.

In comparison, the legal risk of posting fictional bestiality pictures (e.g. humans fucking pokemon) is non-existent. In fact, it’s not even illegal in any jurisdiction, as far as I’m aware of.

This is certainly true, but I have a more pessimistic view that this type of fragmenting dooms this type of fediverse model from ever becoming mainstream. If every interest group splinters, eventually they’re all small enough that they lack the weight to build momentum, as well as the resources to sustain the community long-term. We can see this in the mastodon nsfw instances (a bunch of them shut down), and IMO that’s the inevitable fate of any small instance that lacks the numbers (read: financial support) to support a durable operation.

Random chatter (6/28): I’m dying from ototsuku 🥹 🥹 🥹

@yay@lemmynsfw.com @gavi@lemmynsfw.com

I was looking through the lemmy source and I think some of these features might already be implemented. Perhaps the person working on git.lemmynsfw.com can check it out?

• Hide community from trending section #1980
• Add backend support for muting communities #3238

I think it’s absolutely valid to defederate if the users from a particular instance have a propensity to violate the content policy here.

For communication purposes, I think it’s important to clarify and emphasize that this is the case and it’s not done for political reasons. Maybe I’m overly paranoid, but I always feel as though this is a slippery slope (e.g. defederating from the socialist instance, or the trans/lgbt instance). Personally, for transparency’s sake, I think it’s better to avoid giving the impression that admins defederate from instances that they simply dislike. IMO, the defederation process should go by a process that is clearly defined and a published policies/rules.

That’s very fair.

For me, as someone who consumes a lot of this genre (moreso in erotica), I’ve always felt as though BDSM and CNC are safe ways (IRL) to explore fetishes/fantasies that people have. The emphasis (for me at least) is safety.

As a woman, I’ve found that erotica, fiction, and online roleplay are very safe ways to explore my sexuality. In this sense, I’ve definitely appreciated spaces online where it has been possible to do this, even if the CNC disclaimer isn’t always at the the top of every single story that I read.

Mostly, I’m just a little concerned about the line in the OP that noncon will never be allowed on this instance, and I would like to clarify exactly what that means with respect to this very complicated spectrum of media and sexuality.

IDK if this is a hot take, but personally I think the only reason to defederate should be for content policy.

Otherwise, it should be up to individual users to block communities that they don’t want to see.

Kind of. This community allows explicit, ecchi, and romantic artwork (all three), as long as it’s male/female characters.

I’m not a lawyer and I’m really only familiar with US law, but my understanding is that while murder is illegal, it isn’t illegal to draw artwork/comics illustrating murder or to write a book that contains murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc. The same is true of bestiality or noncon/dubcon in fiction/artwork.

The only exception to this general principle is pedophilia – whereby producing or transmitting pedophilic pictures is definitely illegal in the US.

During that discussion, I think it might be good to clarify exactly what you mean by banning “noncon” artwork.

Maybe it’s just me being nit-picky, but it’s very hard to tell through artwork whether the two parties are consenting or not. One might say, “oh, XXX has an ahegao face, so it must be consensual”, but IMO this perpetuates a very common/dangerous misunderstanding that a woman’s body reaction illustrates her consent… when reality it’s not at all true. The only definitive way to know that consent is present is through explicit verbalization.

The inverse situation (consensual BDSM; e.g. crying/painful face in sex) is also difficult to distinguish for the same reasons. An awkward thing to consider (at least on reddit) is that the exact same pictures get posted to r/rape_hentai and r/hentaicnc (consensual non-consent). In the latter situation, it’s just argued that the characters depicted are “play-acting” and not actually depicting rape. However, it’s exactly the same pictures…

Personally, I think it’s important to consider what’s the rationale and reasons for banning noncon/dubcon depictions in artwork or erotica. Is it to protect victims of sexual assault? For legal reasons? Or because some people consider noncon/dubcon fantasies to be unpleasant? That said, I do think that noncon/dubcon fantasies are almost as popular as BDSM fantasies (and if anything, they’re closely related), the distinguishing caveat being that having a rape fantasy doesn’t mean that a woman who fantasizes about it actually wants to be raped in reality. In some feminine-oriented spaces that I’ve been part of, broadly attacking noncon/dubcon fantasies can be considered a type of kink shaming.

Does this policy also extend to hentai artwork that appears to depict slavery?

What about noncon/dubcon erotica on c/bdsmerotica? (which while small here at the moment, the reddit version often has nc/dubcon)

Does this mean c/rapehentai is banned?

Random comments (6/27):

• I really like c/boredandignoredhentai that @paddedperson runs.
• I saw that someone made c/pornhwa but no one has posted anything in it yet… will they come back? I hope they appear again.
• I’m surprised that r/FemgazeHentai is still private on reddit…
• I impulse buy manga/light novels and it’s really bad. Yesterday, I discovered ototsuku and bought a volume of manga on pixiv comics, but that’s just stupid because I can’t read Japanese and I’m basically just staring at the pictures… I really need to develop my self control

Thank you for everything that you’ve done until now. There will always be a minority of haters, but please know there’s a lot more of us who really appreciated your work (even if we are relatively quiet).

Thank you for putting this together!